In the prior art, STBs are already known, but such devices are not equipped with a peripheral. It is planned, in the evolution of such apparatus, to equip them with remote-controlled interface capacity, i.e. the ability to act like a thin client with respect to an interface server. Such ability is at least the capacity to receive and interpret display instructions, and to emit command messages produced after detecting a type of prompting from an input device connected to the STB. Such behaviour and performance is known as the terminal server.
Nevertheless, this operating mode is in fact ill-adapted to the management of peripherals connected to the STB. Indeed, a peripheral requires a driver in order to enable the apparatus to which it is connected to command the peripheral correctly. Moreover, such drivers often implicate processing performed by the apparatus on which the drivers are installed. Such drivers are, more often than not, incompatible with the power of the apparatus to which the peripheral is connected.
Another problem is that each peripheral requires its own driver, which should be installed on the apparatus driving the peripheral. Insofar as the STB-type device is made reliable due to the relative impossibility to update its application code, this implies that the STB manufacturer is obliged to foresee and safeguard drivers for every peripheral that a user is liable to connect to the STB. This is virtually impossible.
STBs, according to the current art and to that planned to come, are thus not compatible with the comprehensive and efficient driver ability of a peripheral connected to a local port on an STB.